The present invention relates to providing customer data in an automatic call distribution (ACD) system.
ACD systems are typically used to distribute telephone calls among a group of agents of an organization. ACD systems may be used to distribute calls under any of a number of different formats. In a first instance, the term “call” may be used to refer to a request for communication received from (or placed through) a public switched telephone network (PSTN). A call may also be a voice path based upon packet data transferred through a computer network such as the Internet using web telephony. Alternatively, a call may be any communication such as an e-mail, a facsimile, video, web-site inquiry received through the Internet, etc. Thus, ACD systems are transaction processing systems which typically handle one or more of a wide variety of these “call” types.
An organization often disseminates a single telephone number, URL or e-mail address to customers and to the public in general as a means of contacting the organization. As calls are directed to the organization from the PSTN or the Internet, the ACD system directs the calls to the organization's agents based upon some algorithm. For example, where all agents are considered equal, the ACD may distribute a call based on which agent has been idle the longest time. Of course, there are many other possible ways to select an agent, or a subgroup of agents from whom an available one will be selected.
The ACD system can be provided with any number of routing mechanisms for establishing call paths between callers and agents. In some systems, a first path may be established through a circuit switched voice port, such as for calls from the PSTN. An alternative path may be a data link (such as over a Local Area Network (LAN)) such as for an e-mail received through a computer network such as the Internet. A data link also can be used to provide customer data to the agent. For example, such customer data can include contact information relating to the particular contact, such as a customer identifier provided by the customer in response to automatic inquiries. As another example, such data also can include previously stored information available from a database of the organization.
Control of the switching and communications with a database and with an external network such as a PSTN may, for example, be accomplished generally as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,268,903 and 5,140,611, both to Jones et al. which are hereby incorporated by reference. Routing of calls to agents may, for example, be accomplished generally as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,269 to Steinlicht, U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,581 to Baker et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,400,327 to Dezonno, which are hereby incorporated by reference.
In existing systems, providing an agent with customer data, such as mentioned above, can require specialized application programs for agent computer terminals. In some instances, it can require disclosure of proprietary information to interface an ACD with network computers. In some cases, it can limit an organization to types of data and to a format built into purchased ACD systems.
In one embodiment of the present invention, use is made of browser application programs which now are readily available independent of an ACD system, and which are already commonly installed on many personal computers. Desired customer data and its format can be tailored to the organization's needs, and can be packaged as a web page. The ACD can provide a universal resource locator (URL) to a browser of the agent, which accesses the URL address at a server. The web page corresponding with the URL is provided by the server to the browser. The data can be displayed to the agent, regardless of the type of customer contact with the organization's ACD system.
The features of the present invention which are believed to be novel are set forth below with particularity in the appended claims. The invention, together with further advantages thereof, may be understood by reference to the following description in conjunction with the accompanying figures, which illustrate some embodiments of the invention.